The Yugoslav state of the interwar period was a child of the Great European War. Its borders were superimposed onto a topography of conflict and killing, for it housed many war veterans who had ...served or fought in opposing armies (those of the Central Powers and the Entente) during the war. These veterans had been adversaries but after 1918 became fellow subjects of a single state, yet in many cases they carried into peace the divisions of the war years. John Paul Newman tells their story, showing how the South Slav state was unable to escape out of the shadow cast by the First World War. Newman reveals how the deep fracture left by war cut across the fragile states of 'New Europe' in the interwar period, worsening their many political and social problems and bringing the region into a new conflict at the end of the interwar period.
This collection of papers provides an authoritative introduction to the Great Depression as it affected the advanced countries in the 1930s. The contributions are by acknowledged experts in the field ...and cover in detail the experiences of Britain, Germany, and, of course, the United States while also seeing the depression as an international disaster. The crisis entailed the collapse of the international monetary system, sovereign default, and banking crises in many countries in the context of the most severe downturn in western economic history. The responses included protectionism, regulation, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and the New Deal. The relevance to current problems facing Europe and the United States is apparent. The essays are written at a level which will be comprehensible to advanced undergraduates in economics and history while also being a valuable source of reference for policy makers grappling with the current economic crisis. Knowing about the Great Depression should be part of every economist’s education. The book will be of interest to modern macroeconomists and students of interwar history alike and seeks to bring the results of modern research in economic history to a wide audience. The focus is not only on explaining how the Great Depression happened, but also on understanding what eventually led to the recovery from the crisis. A key feature is that every chapter has a full list of bibliographical references which can be a platform for further study.
This book traces the twisted road to war that began with Adolf Hitler's assumption of power in Germany. Covering a wide geographical canvas, from America to the Far East, this book provides a ...reassessment of the most disputed events of these tumultuous years. It underlines the far-reaching consequences of the Great Depression, which shifted the initiative in international affairs from those who upheld the status quo to those who were intent on destroying it. In Europe, the 1930s were Hitler's years. He moved the major chess pieces on the board, forcing the others to respond. From the start, the book argues, he intended war, and he repeatedly gambled on Germany's future to acquire the necessary resources to fulfil his continental ambitions. Only war could have stopped him — an unwelcome message for most of Europe. Misperception, miscomprehension, and misjudgment on the part of the other Great Powers leaders opened the way for Hitler's repeated successes in the area of diplomacy. It is ideology that distinguished the Hitler era from previous struggles for the mastery of Europe. Ideological presumptions created false images and raised barriers to understanding that even good intelligence could not penetrate. Only when the leaders of Britain and France realised the scale of Hitler's ambition, and the challenge Germany posed to their Great Power status, did they finally declare war.
Charles Maier, one of the most prominent contemporary scholars of European history, publishedRecasting Bourgeois Europeas his first book in 1975. Based on extensive archival research, the book ...examines how European societies progressed from a moment of social vulnerability to one of political and economic stabilization.
Arguing that a common trajectory calls for a multi country analysis, Maier provides a comparative history of three European nations and argues that they did not simply return to a prewar status quo, but achieved a new balance of state authority and interest group representation. While most previous accounts presented the decade as a prelude to the Depression and dictatorships, Maier suggests that the stabilization of the 1920s, vulnerable as it was, foreshadowed the more enduring political stability achieved after World War II.
The immense and ambitious scope of this book, its ability to follow diverse histories in detail, and its effort to explain stabilization-and not just revolution or breakdown-have made it a classic of European history.
Between 1919 and 1920, the eastern territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were temporarily administered by the Civic Management of Eastern Territories, established by Józef ...Piłsudski. The residents of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania were to determine their future governance. Piłsudski placed the Civic Management outside the structures of the Polish government, while his opponents from the Polish nationalist wing wanted to suborn it to the government in Warsaw. Based on hitherto unknown archival documents, the author describes the reasons for the failure of Piłsudski’s federation idea, both on the Polish side, as well as errors by Belarusian leaders and the policy of the Lithuanian state.
The European Economy between the Wars, (OUP, 1997) has become the definitive economic history of Europe in the inter-war period. Placing the Great Depression of 1929-33 and the associated financial ...crisis at the center of the narrative, the authors comprehensively examined the lead-up to and consequences of the depression and recovery. Peter Temin and Gianni Toniolo (their former co-author, Charles H. Feinstein, has died) now expand their scope to include the entire world economy, and have created a new edition: The World Economy between the Wars. New material focuses on the structure of the world economy in the 1920s, including a special focus on the United States, Japan, and Latin America. In addition, chapters that discuss the post-depression recovery now cover The New Deal and recovery in general in the United States and Japan. This new edition is a necessary update, and invaluable resource for those who desire an overview of the inter-war area beyond the usual discussion of the 1929 stock market crash. The book's broad geographic coverage, as well as its clarity and chronological execution, will appeal to students of economic history, as well as those academics in other fields whose research involves the inter-war period. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance/9780195307559/toc.html
The 1941 Axis invasion of Yugoslavia initially left the German occupiers with a pacified Serbian heartland willing to cooperate in return for relatively mild treatment. Soon, however, the outbreak of ...resistance shattered Serbia's seeming tranquility, turning the country into a battlefield and an area of bitter civil war. Deftly merging political and social history, Serbia under the Swastika looks at the interactions between Germany's occupation policies, the various forces of resistance and collaboration, and the civilian population. Alexander Prusin reveals a German occupying force at war with itself. Pragmatists intent on maintaining a sedate Serbia increasingly gave way to Nazified agencies obsessed with implementing the expansionist racial vision of the Third Reich. As Prusin shows, the increasing reliance on terror catalyzed conflict between the nationalist Chetniks, communist Partisans, and the collaborationist government. Prusin unwraps the winding system of expediency that at times led the factions to support one-another against the Germans--even as they fought a ferocious internecine civil war to determine the future of Yugoslavia.
